0:10Skip to 0 minutes and 10 secondsI think, if you’re a Humanist, you’ll probably believe that everyone’s going to have a different answer to the question what makes a good life, because everybody leads a different life. Humans are all very different and they have different tastes, different abilities, and so the right way of life for people depends on their individual talents, circumstances and possibilities. A life well lived is one where you do find happiness, in whichever form that is, where you are doing no harm or as little harm as possible to other people and where you can live in families and societies that are cooperative where you are trying your best to make other people’s lives good as well.

0:51Skip to 0 minutes and 51 secondsThat for me is a really good life well lived. A life worth living is one where I’ve achieved as much as I can with my abilities. Knowing that we only have one life, believing that this is the one life that we have means that we want to make the best of it. For me it is in the service of making the world a little bit better. Maybe my work will take a generation or two generations to have any impact but for me that gets me up in the morning, that’s what I like to do. Connections with other people.

1:23Skip to 1 minute and 23 secondsI’m quite fine on my own, I spend a lot of my working week on my own but whenever I’m with anybody else, with a group of people or just my wife, you can feel your well-being increasing. It has to be informed, so I think you have to be reasonably educated about what’s going on in the world, you have to care about the world, the people in it, you have to be excited by it, you have to want to contribute, arts or science, whatever is your thing but leave the place in a better situation than you found it.

What are the ingredients of a good life?

Take a look at the video of different humanists answering the question, ‘What is the good life?’

Look out for similarities and differences between the humanist responses and consider where you agree and where you disagree.

You can find a selection of quotes from some humanists in the further reading below which will provide you with additional humanist responses to the question of what makes a meaningful and worthwhile life.